CA Public Schools are Running a Socialist Business Model that is Scaring (not Utilizing) High Achieving Families
We knew a high achieving Public School honor student and track star named Connie Smith (not her real name). As a senior, Connie wanted to take one less high school class (she’d exhausted all the AP offerings) and take a class at the local JC. The Public School threatened to not allow Connie to participate in sports if she took that JC class. Various Public School intimidations and mediocrities are driving community-minded families like the Smiths into private schools, while students like Connie should be used to help struggling kids (and market the school).
The Background: At this point, let us profile three public high school students in California:
1) Connie (an academic/athletic high achiever, whose parents could afford to send to private school, but choose public school since they are community-minded). Connie is now at UCLA Medical School. Though the average cost to educate a high school student in CA is $15,000, Connie probably costs the school $16,000 (a bit more because of her AP classes), but could easily bring in money to the school or lower the cost of educating other students, using a good business model. First, the Connies could be enlisted to help struggling students, and second, they could be the poster girls that market the school. If their families seek academic augmentation (such as JC classes), let them! (They might also consider embedding JC-quality offerings in their own school). To punish the Connies for seeking academic enrichment (and smearing her rebuttals as “elitist”) seems cutting off public school nose to spite face! (Fensterwald,2023)
2) Naughty Johnnie, who is probably headed to prison. Naughty Johnnie comes from a broken home, and has a variety of diagnoses including possibly ADHD, Bipolarism, Sociopathy. He not only is highly disruptive but tends to cause disruption in others. No other school wants him, and he’s ticketed to continuation school, without graduation. He easily costs the school $20,000, and raises the cost of others from about $15,000 to maybe $18,000. He is the “bad seed” that a normal business model would reject, but this is the public school system which is obligated to take everyone.
3) Low-Income Juan, who is a perfectly good guy, with some language difficulties, low-income parents, and lack of transportation. Juan costs the school $15,000, but could easily cost them $13,000 if they kept him away from Johnny, and moved him towards Connie (difficult but possible as we shall see).
What the P.S. Should Do with Connie: Aside from leaving Connie and her family wondering “what did we do to deserve this treatment?”, and bailing on the Public School system, the Pubic Schools and their unions want a captive market (one that forces their brand upon anyone who stumbles into their system). Their brand is heavily skewed towards “No Child Left Behind” (an 2001 Bush-era concept with money attached, which penalized public schools for not properly addressing the low-achieving kids). Nothing has really changed since then in performance (high-achieving kids achieve, low-achieving kids don’t, since most of this is socio-economic). Most of what has changed is that schools now pretend that low-achievers achieve while ignoring high-achieving families (who are painted with the “overprotective parent/spoiled child” brush if they complain). So the end result is a kind of Socialist system where everyone gets the same trophy no matter what. Meanwhile, while our public high schools are failing internationally, private schools and colleges are thriving under a more capitalistic model (incentives, marketing, achievements, and parental monies are put to good use). The public high schools should realize that Connie is a rare commodity, a private school kid who has wondered into the public school system. As such, they should market Connie to attract other students of her caliber. Most importantly, Connie is perfectly willing to act as a tutor or role-model to struggling students, so it would be natural to put her to work on these fronts. In so doing, she may keep Juan from drifting towards Johnnie.
What the P.S. Should Do with Naughty Johnnie: To begin, we must now realize that the public school must teach with one hand tied behind their backs. They are forced to take Naughty Johnnie, even though he is toxic (I guess Naughty Johnny is one step below the juvenile justice system or he wouldn’t be there). Some say the continuation school should receive extra funding to feed and house the Naughty Johnnies (almost like the prison system), to keep them from contaminating the other kids and to isolate them from problems at home. In any case, the school needs to “firewall” Naughty Johnny in a normal business model, as he is bad for biz. In one business model sense though, Naughty Johnny might be a commodity (perhaps as a soldier or a construction worker, as he is one of those half-crazy and fearless guys). However, I don’t suppose any of the trades have evolved to the point where they’d “buy” Naughty Johnnie off the school. Another bizarre business solution would be to goad Naughty Johnnie into a real crime, so as to palm him off on Juvenile Justice, but good luck there as California is raising the bar for juvenile crime (mostly to save money).
What the P.S. Should Do with Low-Income Juan: This is where it gets interesting. I’ve actually taught and coached students like Juan, and they are quite teachable in the right reference frame. You may have noticed that in the movies “Stand and Deliver” and “McFarland USA”, the California Juans are capable of high levels of academic and athletic achievement. Often you hear things like “low income” and “lack of parental participation and role-modeling” thrown at them, but I suspect they are just as often the victims of the public school’s laziness and low-expectations (which imply a type of racism). Additionally, the Juans don’t have parents that can whisk them away in minivans to travelling soccer squads, and when they reach mid-teens they are under pressure to work after school to help earn money for their families. The secret, I believe, is to help these kids attend after school practices and academic advancements, selling their families on a kind of “delayed gratification” (less income now, more income later). The better among the Juans also need to hang with the Connies of the world, and in some instances they can become Connies themselves.
So if Connie is on the math competition squad, Editor of the School Newspaper, and a track star, the Juans need to be right there with her. It might take several carpools and tutoring sessions, plus some parental role-modeling to achieve all this, but it is all possible. Indeed, the community-service attitude of Connie’s parents would welcome all this.
What the Public Schools Should be Doing: Rather than ignoring low-income Juan (and driving him into the hands of Naughty Johnny) or pretending low-income Juan is doing well when he isn’t, the Public Schools need to foster a system where Connie is partnering with Juan, while Johnny is out of the picture. Instead, the schools seem to be taking Connie for granted, and forcing families like hers into private schools or early college (who can blame them? These other schools reward her). As of late, the public school system is even delaying Algebra until freshman year (so that Juan can “catch up” with Connie, making it look like no child was left behind, rather than helping prep Juan in 6th or 7th grade so he could match Connie’s timeline). Is it ever good to help the slower runner “win” by handicapping the better runner? No, we live in a successful capitalistic system where the slower runner is expected to work harder to compete on fairer terms.
There are other things that are scaring the Connies and Juans out of the California Public School system, including the “Education not Indoctrination” theme. For some reason, our public school system feels it can “compete” by bleeding social agendas into our schools. Our Teacher’s Union is quite strong also, having defeated even weak voucher initiatives that would’ve given a measly $1500 per student (like Connie) to take with them to private schools. Its become almost a battle of the public school’s lefty social agenda (Sex ed which obliquely promotes sex and LGBT, Evolution, Climate Change, Feminism, Racial injustice) versus the private school’s often righty agenda (no sex ed, anti-LGBT, creationism, Climate Change denial, Anti-feminism, Anti-racial injustice), with families like Connie’s (and Juan’s) caught in the middle. Shouldn’t public high school education start with consensus fact-based education, followed with elective editorial critiquing (including a student’s first amendment right to say what they want without coaching from the teachers or parroting?). I’d say the same for private schools, but then I have to consider their privilege as often church-based biases are allowed. All this surely a large subject ripe for another article!
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